Ivan Turgenev
APROPOS OF "FATHERS AND SONS"
I was sea-bathing at Ventnor, a small town on the Isle of
Wight-it was in August, 1860-when the first idea occurred to me
of
Fathers and Sons,
the novel which deprived me, forever I believe,
of the good opinion of the Russian younger generation. I have heard
it said and read it in critical articles not once but many times that
in
my works I always "started with an idea" or "developed an idea."
Some people praised me for it, others, on the contrary, censured me;
for my part, I must confess that I never attempted to "create a char–
acter" unless I had for my departing point not an idea but a living
person to whom the appropriate elements were later on gradually at–
tached and added. Not possessing a great amount of free inventive
powers, I always felt the need of some firm ground on which I could
plant my feet. The same thing happened with
Fathers and Sons;
as
the basis of its chief character, Bazarov, lay the personality of a
young provincial doctor I had been greatly struck by. (He died shortly
before 1860.) In that remarkable man I could watch the embodi–
ment of that principle which had scarcely come to life but was just
beginning to stir at the time, the principle which later received the
name of nihilism. Though very powerful, the impression that man
left on me was still rather vague. At first I could not quite make him
out myself, and I kept observing and listening intently to everything
around me, as though wishing to check the truth of my own impres–
sions. I was worried by the following fact: not
in
one work of our
literature did I ever find as much as a hint at what I seemed to see
everywhere; I could not help wondering whether I was not chasing
after a phantom. On the Isle of Wight, I remember, there lived
• From
Turgenev's Literary Reminiscences
to
be published shortly by Farrar,
Straus
&:
Cudahy.
